Note 100 — ON AN OLD STONE-ROOFED CELL OR ORATORY IN THE ISLAND OF INCHCOLM.[16]

"Alanus de Mortuo Mari, Miles, Dominus de Abirdaur, dedit omnes et totas dimidietates terrarum Villæ suæ de Abirdaur, Deo et Monachis de Insula Sancti Columbi, pro sepultura sibi et posteris suis in Ecclesia dicti Monasterii." (Quoted from the MS. Register or Chartulary of the Abbey by Sir Robert Sibbald in his History of Fife, p. 41.) The same author adds, that, in consequence of this grant to the Monastery of Inchcolm for leave of sepulture, the Earl of Murray (who represents "Stewart Abbott of Inchcolm," that sat as a lay Commendator in the Parliament of 1560, when the Confession of Faith was approved of) now possesses "the wester half of Aberdour." Sir Robert Sibbald further mentions the story that "Alain, the founder, being dead, the Monks, carrying his corpse in a coffin of lead, by barge, in the night-time, to be interred within their church, some wicked Monks did throw the samen in a great deep betwixt the land and the Monastery, which to this day, by the neighbouring fishermen and salters, is called Mortimer's deep." He does not give the year of the preceding grant by Alain de Mortimer, but states that "the Mortimers had this Lordship by the marriage of Anicea, only daughter and sole heiress of Dominus Joannes de Vetere Ponte or Vypont, in anno 1126." It appears to have been her husband who made the above grant. (See Nisbet's Heraldry, vol. i. p. 294.)